1. Field of Art
The disclosure generally relates to the field of user interfaces, and more specifically, to a user interface that scales visual elements of windows at different ratios.
2. Description of the Related Art
On conventional computing devices, more than one application may be launched and operated simultaneously. Each application may display related information in one or more windows. Graphical user interfaces of such conventional computing devices generally allow one or more windows to be displayed on the screen of the computing devices. Such windows may be resized and relocated based on user's preferences. Specifically, the size of a window may be decreased or minimized to display more numbers of windows or provide a more general overview of applications running of the computing device. Conversely, the size of the window may be increased or maximized to display more detailed information about the application.
One class of conventional operating systems allows users to locate windows by providing descriptions of the windows at predetermined locations of the windows (for example, at the top of the windows). When the windows are minimized into thumbnails, the description of the windows may be provided adjacent to the minimized thumbnails. The users may identify the windows from the descriptions of the windows and then perform predetermined actions (for example, double-clicking cursor on the thumbnail) to expand the thumbnails into windows.
Another class of conventional operating systems allows users to locate a desired window by displaying thumbnails of windows. The thumbnails are scaled-down versions of the windows, which displays all of the contents in the open window in a shrunk format. The users may move cursors over the thumbnail and select the thumbnail to expand it into a window. All the contents in the thumbnails, however, are scaled down at equal ratio. Therefore, the letters or other identifications appearing in the thumbnails are also scaled down, making it difficult for the users to discern which thumbnails represent which windows. The scaling of windows into thumbnails also requires computational resources because all the contents displayed on the open windows must be bitmap scaled.
Hence, the current state of the art lacks, inter alia, a user interface and corresponding system and method for allowing users to easily and promptly identify a certain window from multiple windows or thumbnails displayed on a display screen of a computing device.